The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS [9.55 p.m.]: Tonight I plan once again to travel up the Congo of government largesse into the heart of darkness of anthropogenic global warming swindlers. Two weeks ago the Hon. Peter Primrose rather ill-advisedly repeated the outrageous claims that anthropogenic global warming scientists at the Australian National University [ANU] were subjected to death threats and had to be moved to high-security complexes. That has now been exposed as a complete and utter fabrication. I give full credit to Andrew Carswell from the Daily Telegraph, who wrote:

Claims prominent climate change scientists had recently received death threats have been revealed as an opportunistic ploy, with the Australian National University admitting that they occurred up to five years ago.

Only two of the ANU's climate change scientists allegedly received death threats, the first in a letter posted in 2006-2007 and the other an offhand remark made in person 12 months ago.

... Reports also suggested the threats had forced the ANU to lock away its climate change scientists and policy advisers in a high-security complex. The Daily Telegraph has discovered the nine scientists and staff in question were merely given keyless swipe cards—routine security measures taken last year.

... ANU communications director Catriona Jackson would not reveal the exact wording of the threats, but added: "Abusive emails are par for the course for most climate change scientists."

The poor petals—abusive emails! As I understand it, the scientists have tonight left their steel and concrete bunkers to emerge through the death threats and abusive emails to tell politicians that the campaign being run against scientific evidence of man-made climate change "is undermining the nation-building work of all scientists". The nation-building work of all scientists! What happened to neutral objectivity in science? Is this a bit of mission creep creeping in? Why would scientists need nation-building as part of their work unless they were instruments of the State? If the anthropogenic global warming disciples displayed more credibility and ceased their relentless Lysenkoism, perhaps they would not draw such ire from the community. If the science is settled, why do they keep lying about it?

In recent times we had reports that anthropogenic global warming scientists have artificially inflated sea rise by three centimetres. Why? Because it is not recording that the continents are actually rising up. They have had to fabricate a three-centimetre rise in water to give their ideas some credibility. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] issued a report last month suggesting:

... renewable sources could provide 77 per cent of the world's energy supply by 2050. But in supporting documents released this week it emerged that the claim was based on a real-terms decline in worldwide energy consumption over the next 40 years, and that the lead author of the section concerned was an employee of Greenpeace. Not only that, but the modelling scenario used was the most optimistic of the 164 investigated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

That just about says it all about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its reports. There is an unquestionable nexus between funding and political outcomes. I refer to Matt Ridley in today's Australian, whonoted:

... the deep prejudice towards pessimism that dominates the intelligentsia.

... What is more, pessimism has become a hallmark of the Left, chiefly because it justifies activism.

... Today, infected by Malthusian ecology, the Left relentlessly preaches millennial doom and technological risk: ... A dramatic change in human stewardship of the planet is needed.

Members can guess who wants to be the steward, who wants to be in charge. The article continued:

There's a broad constituency for pessimism. No pressure group ever got donations by telling its donors calamity was unlikely; and no reporter ever got his editor's attention by saying that a scare was overblown; and no politician ever got on television by downplaying doom.

There is always a crisis in the great global warming swindle—water level rises of 100 metres, Sydney dams becoming empty, Perth having to be abandoned. There are always crises because crises demand government funding and government intervention. As Jonah Goldberg stated in his recent study on totalitarianism:

Crisis is routinely identified as a core mechanism of fascism because it short-circuits debate and democratic deliberation. Hence all fascist movements commit considerable energy to prolonging a heightened state of emergency.